The Sweet Danger of Sugar

In today's video, we'll learn about the dark truth about sugar. The research has revealed the alarming amount of sugar Australian teenagers are consuming every year from sugary drinks alone. An average American consumed 2 pounds of sugar per year, and now we consume over 150 pounds a year. Experts say the focus on low fat often hid the fact that sweet stuff was being added to packaged food. Almost everyone's favorite ingredient, sugar. It turns out added sugar raises the risk of deadly heart problems. You have heard that you should be eating less sugar because sugar is responsible for more than 60 diseases, including cardiovascular complications and obesity. But do you know that even that artificial sweetener on your kitchen shelf is just as harmful to your body as sugar itself? Do you doubt that? Pull that seat and let me show you just how dangerous that artificial sweetener you are using is to your health. Artificial sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, commonly known as HFCS, are the most harmful of all sugar substitutes as they alone account for more than 40% of caloric sweeteners added to foods and drinks. You might see a label that doesn't list the white stuff and think you are home free. Not true, mate. Manufacturers are now using cheaper HFCS and artificial sweeteners to replace sugar. And both artificial sweeteners and HFCS have been implicated in the fattening of most people worldwide. The perception of sugar free is not unlike that of fat free which was popular a few decades ago. Consider this. Ever since we started slashing the fat and consuming those monster sized low fat muffins and boxes of fat free cookies, we have gotten fatter. Why? Because most of us were consuming those fat free goodies with abandon, disregarding that they usually have more sugar and sometimes only slightly fewer calories than the original products. Let's look closely at Nabisco fig newton cookies as an example. Two original fig newtons supply 13 grams of sugar and 110 calories. If you eat two Nabisco fat free fig newtons, thinking you are doing your body a favor, you will get no fat, but you will get more sugar, 15 grams instead of 13 grams to be precise, and only 10 fewer calories. Add to this the fact that the fat in the original cookie helps increase your appetite, so you are apt to eat only a few. With the fat free kind, people sometimes eat whole boxes without feeling satisfied. Nonetheless, sales of fat free products skyrocketed. In line with this modern misconception, reduced sugar products now line the shelves and ultimately play this same trick on your hunger receptors and waistline. Reduced sugar and sugar free products, from breakfast cereals to jelly beans, have taken up permanent residence on our supermarket shelves, and they are multiplying rapidly. So before you automatically reach for that reduced sugar product, remind yourself that it is up to you to be your food detective. As a food detective, you simply need to recognize that if you are automatically reaching for a product advertising itself as reduced sugar to be able to eat sweets without the intake of calories, you may be in for a rude shock. When a product is supplemented with an artificial sweetener, you may not significantly reduce calories. For example, not long ago, jelly belly beans added Splenda to decrease the sugar content and slapped on a sugar free label. Yet the difference between the original jelly belly and the sugar free jelly belly is only 1 calorie. Finally, as a food detective, you must ask whether sugar substitutes are safe. Most sugar substitutes have been associated with symptoms such as headaches, bloating, and stomach cramps. Experts have warned that children under 3 should not consume sugar free products because their immature digestive system combined with smaller body mass could trigger digestive discomfort. Experts suggest that parents carefully monitor children's total consumption of sugar free products. That said, consuming artificial sweeteners in the form of sugar alcohols including mannitol, sorbitol, and xylitol may increase caloric intake. Sugar alcohols originate from fruits and berries, which seem natural enough. Sugar alcohol laced low carb products are touted by manufacturers as being virtually sugar free because of the perception that the calories or sugars in these foods don't count. Why? The carbs from sugar alcohols metabolize into glucose much more slowly than real sugar and so don't impact blood sugar levels the way sugar does. In light of this concept, manufacturers subtract the sugar alcohols from a product's total amount of carbs and what is left is known as net carbs. With people under the impression that low carb foods are also low calorie because the sugar alcohols in the products don't count as carbs, low carb food sales have significantly increased. But the sad reality is that sugar alcohols do raise glucose levels in the blood. You need to consider all the carbs and all the calories in any sugar alcohol containing product and ignore the deceptive net carb label. Even more problematic is the reality that there are not enough clinical trials on sugar alcohols to warrant their safe use. It's undoubtedly clear that sugar and its substitute are the root causes of our obesity epidemic and associated health problems, much more so than fat, which in the recent past was considered the dietary boogeyman. Here is something interesting. Most experts believe that the fear of eating fat can make you fat. The bottom line is that the right kind of fat is an essential nutrient that our bodies need. Sugar and its substitute, however, are something we don't need. For instance, even though the French diet is higher in fat than the American diet, the French are much less affected by obesity and heart disease than Americans are. So what's the French secret to maintaining weight and better health? In France, per capita sugar consumption is roughly five and a half times less than in America. Humans don't require sugar, yet average Americans consume their body weight in sugar each year. If all Americans knew the dangers of sugar, they would withdraw it from their list of safe food additives. Remember, refined sugar acts more like a drug that our bodies must detoxify than a nutrient supplying food. Refined sugar is, in fact, nutrient-less. Essential nutrients such as chromium, manganese, cobalt, copper, zinc, and magnesium are stripped away in sugar refining, and our bodies have to use their mineral reserves to digest it. With many calories but no nutrients, sugar and its substitutes are the number one cause of most people's lack of nutrition. It means we consume too many calories that add to weight but don't give us the nutrients needed to keep our bodies functioning properly. Our distant ancestors ate no concentrated sugars. Two centuries ago, people ate sugar only as a rare treat, but now sugar and other sweeteners have become part of our everyday diet. Little by little, as the world has developed and become more civilized, most people have become increasingly sugared. The average person today eats about 180 pounds of sugar per year or around half a pound of sugar per day. Compare this to the consumption of fewer than 10 pounds of sugar per year in the late 1700s, and you can see that sugar consumption has risen more than 1,800% in the last 200 years. As I said, artificial sweeteners are just as dangerous as sugar. High fructose corn syrup, HFCS, for example, is a concentrated sweetener that the brain doesn't even recognize as a sugar. By replacing sugar with HFCS, you can override your body's natural ability to feel full, so you eat more. Without this signal, you don't know when to stop eating. Now that is downright dangerous. HFCS is found in just about every food in our supermarket, including sodas, juices, candies, syrups, pasta sauces, cookies, cakes, energy bars, baked goods, canned foods, salad dressing, breakfast cereals, yogurt, ketchup, frozen foods, baby formula, and more. Listen to this, the average consumption of all corn sweeteners, including HFCS, is 83 pounds annually. Thanks for watching. I hope this video has changed how you view sugar and its substitutes. Feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues to spread awareness. That said, check out my next video on the steps to follow when on sugar detox. They are so simple and fun.